A recent LinkedIn post by researcher and social worker Nicholas Marsh made me mull over issues of terminology. What’s the most suitable term for those between 13 and 18? And wider: what’s at stake in how we name developmental periods?
Marsh points out that there’s a longstanding debate amongst professionals on how we should refer to teenagers. There are two sets of arguments. On the one side, it’s claimed that calling teenagers ‘children’ guards against adultification bias, the risk of viewing adolescents, particularly Black adolescents, as older and more adult-like than they are.